Hand-held cutting devices are used in various industries and hobbies such as quilting, sewing and scrapbooking, and are also often used by graphic artists, architects, model makers and the like. Basic types of hand-held cutting device include scissors, rotary cutters and Exacto knives which are typically used to make single cuts in sheet material or other substrates.
Rotary cutters typically have a hand-held body, a circular blade mounted on an actuating member at a front of the body and a mechanism for moving the actuating member from a safety position to an operative position. Rotary cutters are made by Fiskars and Olfa Corp. and some are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,101,564, 5,299,355, 5,355,588, 5,711,077, 5,765,289, 6,189,218, 6,282,794, Des. 388,305 and Des. 412,274.
Special cutting devices have been developed to make multiple cuts simultaneously, e.g., a pair of parallel cuts, and to make perfectly circular cuts.
One hand-held cutting device of the first type is a Grifhold Dual Cutter 88 which includes a handle, a fork member defining two prongs having integral cutting blades at its ends and an adjustment screw for adjusting the distance between the prongs and thus the distances between the blades. By drawing the blades over a sheet of material, two parallel cuts are formed. A disadvantage of this cutting device is that the distance between the blades, i.e., the maximum cutting width, is limited.
Several cutting devices of the second type which made by Olfa and include a compass cutter designated CMP-1 which is capable of forming an interior circular cut in a substrate. This compass cutter includes a beam, a pivot point fixture which slides along the beam and a single rotatable cutting blade fixed at one end of the beam. A handle is integrated with the pivot point fixture. The radius of the cut-out is determined and the pivot point fixture is slid to a position at which the distance between the pivot point fixture and blade is equal to the radius and then fixed in position. Rotation of the blade about the pivot point fixture thereby forms a circular cut-out in the substrate.
Another Olfa cutting device for making perfectly circular cuts is designated CMP-3 and referred to as a rotary circle cutter. In this cutting device, the handle is separated from the pivot point fixture to enable easier use of the device.
A rotary circle cutter is described in U.S. Pat. Appln. Publ. No. 2003/0056378.
In both Olfa cutting devices, only a single circular cut-out with straight edges can be formed during each use. Often however, it is desired to make multiple circular cuts in a substrate and the Olfa devices are unable to make such cuts in a single use. Rather, the device must be re-sized and used multiple times to make multiple cuts. This is disadvantageous as it wastes time and requires additional effort.
Another issue which arises in the industries mentioned above is that it is often desired to make a decorative cut, i.e., a cut which is not the typical straight line made by standard scissors or an Exacto knife. Scissors are therefore manufactured with a cutting edge which is undulating or wavy to provide such decorative cuts. However, if both a straight cut and decorative cut are desired, it would be necessary to purchase and use two pairs of scissors or purchase a single rotary cutter and two different blades which can be independently mounted thereto and make a blade change between the cuts.
Another concern about cutting devices is the potential for harm when a person inadvertently brushes against an exposed blade while handling the cutting device or mishandles a cutting blade when replacing a blade. For this reason, cutting devices with exposed blades and/or replaceable blades have not been highly welcomed by elderly people who have difficulty in handling the small blades and are reluctant to risk the potential for serious injury caused by the sharp blades.
Yet another concern with hand-held cutting devices is how to cut along parallel lines. Use of a ruler to obtain parallel cuts with a rotary cutting device or a scissor is challenging and often, the lines are not exactly parallel to one another.
With the growing popularity of scrapbooking, quiltmaking, creative crafting, pattern making and collage making, ways are sought to create unique patterns and shapes of sheet material, such as fabric, foil, paper, vinyl and plastic (whether or not these materials are stored prior to use in rolled form or flat, sheet form). Moreover, for framing objects in circular frames, circular mats are usually needed, i.e., an annular piece of material to be inserted into the frame around a picture or other object being displayed in the frame.
It is thus desirable to provide cutting devices which are more versatile than the prior art cutting devices described above and are capable of cutting sheet material in various ways.
It would also be desireable to provide a device which can cut a sheet of material, write on a sheet of material, and emboss a sheet of material, perform any two of the same or different actions on different parts of the sheet of material and even perform any three of the same or different three actions on different parts of the sheet of material. In this manner, a multitude of different variations of cuts, embossed patterns and writings could be made on the same sheet of material. The term “sheet material” of “sheet of material” as used herein is intended to cover all substantially planar substrates, whether sold in flat, sheet form ready for modification or in rolled form which must therefore be unrolled prior to modification.
All of the references mentioned above are incorporated by reference herein.